Source: Dress and Ideology. Fashioning Identity from Antiquity to the Present
2017

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Islamic/Muslim dressIn order to understand fully Muslim female dress in Israel, some basic concepts will be clarified here. Islam, like most other religions, regulates the behavior of its believers.Linda B. Arthur ed., “Introduction,” Religion, Dress and the Body, Oxford and NY: Berg, 1999, p. 1. Like other faiths, its legal code lays down rules regarding the related fields of clothing and sexuality.Steele, Valerie, Fashion and Eroticism, Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era to the Ja

Source: Dress and Ideology. Fashioning Identity from Antiquity to the Present
2017

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civil rightsgenderDuring the French Revolution, dress became an important issue: one of the ways in which revolutionaries’ values were to be obtained and symbolized was through the adoption of class-less styles of clothing, which expressed the ideals of Fraternity, Liberty, and Equality.

Source: Dress and Ideology. Fashioning Identity from Antiquity to the Present
2017

Book
chapter

François Rabelais (1494–1553), a major French RenaissanceRenaissance writer and humanist, dedicated five novels to a family of giants and their adventures. Although these books are written in an amusing and satirical vein, through them Rabelais denounces Middle Ages backwardness and promotes Renaissance values; according to David M. Posner, “[t]he comic or parodic aspects of the text are, for Rabelais, inseparable from the hermeneutic act, and are essential both to accurate reading and to a recog

Source: Dress and Ideology. Fashioning Identity from Antiquity to the Present
2017

Book
chapter

The promulgation of sumptuary laws, regulating specific items of dress that might be worn by various individuals on certain occasions, is a well-known chapter of European social history from the late Middle Ages to the eighteenth century.On Jewish sumptuary legislation in general see: Salo Wittmayer Baron, The Jewish Community: Its History and Structure to the American Revolution, 3 vols, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1942; Louis Finkelstein, Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages,

Source: Dress and Ideology. Fashioning Identity from Antiquity to the Present
2017

Book
chapter

Only a few instances from the Roman Empire actually provide scholars with near-complete assemblages of panoplies, and most rare of all are the remains that derived directly from conflict lands. In addition to the celebrated navy soldier from ce79 Herculaneum,R. Gore, “2000 Years of Silence: The Dead Do Tell Tales at Vesuvius,” National Geographic, 165 (1984), pp. 557–613; S. Ortisi “Pompeji und Herculaneum—Soldaten in den Vesuvsdäten,” Archäologie der Schlachtfelder—Militaria aus Zerstörungshoriz

Source: Dress and Ideology. Fashioning Identity from Antiquity to the Present
2017

Book
chapter

The human species has always been dependent on breastfeeding, at least until the last third of the nineteenth century, when Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) invented the pasteurization of animal milk to be used to feed infants. Indeed, while examining artistic depictions of infant feeding through Western history, bottle-feeding was extremely rare in comparison to nursing women.See for example: Hubert Robert, Jeune femme tenant un biberon à un bébé, 1773, oil on canvas, 22 x 27 cm, Valence, Musée des Bea

Source: The Superhero Costume. Identity and disguise in fact and fiction
2016

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Superman’s othernessotherness is firmly established in a costume that is identical from day to day. Wearing only one costume, Superman reduces his core values to a single, consistent message which is not compromised by daily adjustments to his wardrobe. This kind of “distinctive persistent dress,” finds Gregory Stone (1981, p. 144), is more commonly associated with professional responsibilities than with personal identity, and so through consistency of dress, Superman presents himself as acting i

Source: The Superhero Costume. Identity and disguise in fact and fiction
2016

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The function of a costume or mask is to “disguisedisguise, protect or transform” (Wilsher, 2007, p. 12). For superheroes, the mask serves all three of these functions. It identity constructionreligiontransforms the wearer from ordinary civilian to superhero, disguising him in order to protect the identity of his alter ego, and those he cares about. The duality of the superhero’s identity is bound up in his costume. His public face, the mask, conceals his private face, hidden underneath.

Source: The Superhero Costume. Identity and disguise in fact and fiction
2016

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Superheroes are immediately identified as extraordinary by their costumes. These costumes are, in contrast to the civilian clothing of their alter ego, colorful, bold, figure-hugging, and often seemingly impractical. At first glance, they may print (comics)accuracyappear ludicrous, but their origins reveal aspects of these costumes to be both necessary and plausible.

Source: The Superhero Costume. Identity and disguise in fact and fiction
2016

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Captain AmericaCaptain America was created as a defender of the values of the United States of America. His appearance resembles those of Olympians, for whom national allegiance becomes the defining factor in the design of their uniforms. When they inject Steve Rogers with a serum to give him super-powers, the American secret service intend that his supernatural athleticismathleticism will be used in combat, on behalf of the US Army. He is dressed in a flag-like costume, and introduced to the wor

Source: The Superhero Costume. Identity and disguise in fact and fiction
2016

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physiognomyImages depicting animals with human characteristics, and hybrid animal-human beasts, were a staple of ancient religion and mythology. Sometimes, they were deities, like Bastet, the feline goddess of Ancient Egypt, and at other times they were the monstrous product of animal/human coupling, like ancient Crete’s Minotaur. These historical animal-human hybrids had a special power and allure. The duality of this fusion of “human and the non-human” can be frightening, or at least unsettling

Source: The Superhero Costume. Identity and disguise in fact and fiction
2016

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Those superhero costumes that remain most static over time are largely symbolic. When costumes are utilitarian, as with Iron Man (character)Iron Man’s suit, extreme transformation is justifiable as a technological development. By contrast, the costumes of Superman (character)Superman and Wonder WomanWonder Woman, which do little to enhance their performance, remain relatively consistent. Such garments function through stylistic or, following Barthes, RolandBarthes, linguistic expression, more tha

Source: The Superhero Costume. Identity and disguise in fact and fiction
2016

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re-enactmentThe notion of a fan has moved beyond “older ideas of media spectatorship” that involve little more than direct consumption of a cultural artifact (Flemming, 2007, p. 16). participatory fandomParticipatory fandom involves tangential activities which expand upon the fictional world and blur boundaries with reality. “Fans create a fan culture with its own systems of production and distribution that forms . . . a ‘shadow cultural economy’ that lies outside that of the cultural industries

Source: The Superhero Costume. Identity and disguise in fact and fiction
2016

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The appropriation of the superhero costume often comes in conjunction with the performance of a superhero lifestyle. Masked vigilantes patrol the streets of cities including Seattle, Atlanta, New York, Toronto, MexicoMexico City, and London, and congregate in cyberspace via the World Superhero RegistryWorld Superhero Registry. Though they are too numerous to list here, those real-life superheroes that have been the subject of academic study include Phoenix Jones, PhoenixJones, who patrols the str

Source: The Superhero Costume. Identity and disguise in fact and fiction
2016

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upgradestechnologyinsigniacivilian alter egoidentity constructionOnce a costume is established as a representation of a certain set of values and abilities, the superhero identity can become more attached to the costume than to its wearer. In the case of Iron Man, identityidentity is more bound up in the costume than with any other superhero. Indeed, Iron Man is not a man, but an augmentation.

Source: The Superhero Costume. Identity and disguise in fact and fiction
2016

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identitycustomizationconformitycolorReynolds (1992, p. 26) observes that all superhero costumes function “as a uniform, binding together all super-beings.” The superhero uniformuniform asserts his readiness to perform acts of heroism, and aligns him with crime-fighting values. Costume “creates a community between its wearers” (ibid.), communicating to audiences that even the most isolated or rebellious superhero conforms to a core set of ideals that define the superhero genre. More so than other